If you’ve just started promoting your small business with digital marketing campaigns, you’ve probably come across the acronym CTR, which stands for clickthrough rate. But what is a clickthrough rate and how can you improve it to make your campaigns more effective? Let’s have a look.
What is clickthrough rate?
Clickthrough rate is one of many social media metrics to measure the success of your social media campaigns. It refers to the ratio of clicks a link or call to action gets to the number of times impressions. The number of impressions refers to the number of people who interact with the link or call to action.
Therefore, the clickthrough rate is the percentage of the number of impressions that developed in a click. It is a fundamental metric that you should monitor when applying paid customer procurement.
How is the clickthrough rate calculated?
Simply divide the number of people who click on your ad link by the number of people who have seen the ad. Finally, multiply by 100 to transform it into a percentage.
CTR = (clickthroughs / impressions) x 100
How to calculate CTR (Source: Metigy X Social Status social media benchmark report)
Why do clickthrough rates matter?
The higher your clickthrough rate is, as a percentage, the more effective your ad is because it is engaging enough to convert people to click through to what you are advertising.
Clickthrough rate is the initial step in the overall process of improving the relevancy of your ad. It measures the success of pay-per-click (PPC) search outcomes.
Tips to increase your clickthrough rate
When you understand your audience, you can tailor your ads to reach the intended audience. It also helps when choosing the proper keywords, suitable images, and solving the exact pain points.
Use countdown timers to instill urgency in your ad. Using countdown timers can increase the CTR rate by 32%. Customers will more likely click on such ads from a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
Be creative when it comes to creating an appealing ad copy. Keep it short but engaging to show value to your customers. The more interesting and engaging your ad is, the better the click-through rate will be.
Keywords are essential in PPC campaigns to attract the target audience. When you understand information about your target market, you can easily come up with related keywords. Refrain from using broad keywords or stuffing them.
Once you distinguish your audience, optimize your ads. Ad optimization means that your ads will always be relevant to your target audience. You can achieve this by improving on those ads through A/B testing and user testing to achieve the desired outcome. and what they are looking for, you can then test your ads.
Clickthrough rate: In summary
High clickthrough rates indicate that your website has relevant and informative content for your audience, resulting in a higher ranking in the search engine results. To learn more about other social media metrics and how to optimize them, make sure to check out our social media report in collaboration with Social Status. 
How to calculate CTR (Source: Metigy X Social Status social media benchmark report)
